Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance

by Edgar Villanueva

The most obvious kinds of wealth are ancient, priceless pieces or precious objects made of gold and jewels, for example, that are displayed behind reinforced glass and protected by high-tech security systems and guards. A lot of those artifacts were stolen from their cultures of origin by the original colonizers. There are approximately 90,000 pieces from Africa in French museums and cultural institutions.2 The British Museum has 8 million items in its collection, including sacred objects from all over the world, and more than 6,000 human remains. “Not everything was acquired illegally,” notes an article about the British Museum in The Economist. “Some items were bought, exchanged or received as gifts—though there’s a question as to how freely a gift is given, if it’s handed over to a man at the head of a platoon of bayonets.”3